Of the four English clubs competing this week in the opening group matches of the European Champions League, Arsenal look the least likely to survive.
The Gunners travel to Dortmund to meet the current Bundesliga champions Borussia and on evidence of their meagre victory last Saturday at the Emirates over promoted Swansea, they would find life hard against a team which scored four times in its most recent match last Friday. That was even without their precocious playmaker 19-year-old Mario Grotze.
Wilshere will be out of action for weeks to come, and was severely missed by England in their limp win against Wales, as well as the gunner's victory by freakish goal over Swansea.
Gotze tends to play wide on the right which would bring him up against one of the few Arsenal players to impress against Swansea, in the shape of 18-year-old Kieran Gibbs, whose attacking ways especially in the closing minutes of the game were exceptional, showing all the pace and skills of a classical left winger. But if Gotze is to play on the Dortmund right could Gibbs afford to drive in to attack?
At least as the gunners manager, Arsenal Wenger emphasized after the Swansea game, won by a farcical goal when Swansea's distracted keeper tried to roll the ball to his right back, succeeding only in seeing it bounce of the defender's heel, enabling Russian international Andrei Arshavin, useful in midweek for his country in the goalless draw with Ireland, to shoot into the unguarded net.
In parenthesis you have to wonder at the controversial Fifa decision to allot the 2018 world cup to Russia. Last week's appalling air crash wiped out almost the entire Yaroslav Lokomotiv ice hockey team. The aircraft was 18 years old plus there was reportedly poor training for pilots. How will the major European clubs and others feel about entrusting their leading players to an overblown tournament with such a plethora of teams, constantly flying about the vast country? Not to mention the fact that given the shocking racist record of Russian club fans toward black players, Russia should never have been a choice in the first place.
As for Arsenal, at least in Dortmund they will be able to use Gervinho the Ivory Coast winger, and in the midfield Alex Song. Wenger had what seemed to be a desperate shopping spree on the eve of the transfer window closing, and paid a huge £20 million for Spain and Everton's Arteta, who hasn't remotely got the drive of the missing Fabergas.
The author is an expert on football based in England
